By Jonathan Gourlay

The country’s best-known custom bike builder is a proving ground for SolidWorks advanced technology.

Orange County Choppers (OCC) of Montgomery, NY, has become a household brand because of its exposure on the Discovery Channel television series “American Chopper.” The show’s and the shop’s enormous success helped lead patriarch and boss Paul Teutul Sr. to expand OCC’s custom bike-building business to handle a growing volume of projects.

   

Photo by Tool.

To do that, among many moves, he hired a young artist named Jason Pohl and charged him with the task of lifting some of the volume off the shoulders of OCC’s main designer, Paul Jr. To help with the growing demand for custom-designed motorcycles, another part of Pohl’s job was figuring out how to manufacture more parts in house.

]Online Editor’s Note: Scroll down to the bottom of this article for extra images that did not appear in the print version of this article.]

3D Design at OCC

“Modeling software was a natural,” says Pohl. “We chose SolidWorks because we heard it was easy to use and it was a good program to start with.” Once the decision had been made, Chris Salmers, solution partner development manager at SolidWorks, was called in to aid OCC in learning the ins and outs of MCAD tools.

“Initially, we were not thinking about building or purchasing a bike,” says Salmers. But, as SolidWorks CEO John McEleney likes to point out, “From a mechanical engineer’s point of view, there’s nothing more mechanical than a motorcycle,” and the idea for a SolidWorks chopper was born.

›› OCC picked SolidWorks because of its reputation as an easy-to-use program. This screen shot shows the solid model of the chopper’s rear wheel after its polished surfacing has been applied. .

“The bike seemed like a natural thing to do,” agrees Salmers. “It became a real proving ground for SolidWorks and the advanced technology.” Part of the challenge was to design an aluminum swingarm, which connects the rear wheel to the bike’s frame. This raised a few eyebrows at OCC because the part must handle quite a bit of stress. A big part of assuaging doubters was the ability to virtually test the design with COSMOSWorks. The finished swingarm passed with a 32:1 safety factor.

“It was also a fairly risky undertaking considering that Jason is an artist,” adds Salmers, “not an engineer or a designer.” So Salmers set to teaching Pohl the basics of using the software while giving him a quick overview of engineering fundamentals. And in the end, OCC produced the bike inside of six months. Salmers still marvels that Pohl also “even learned how to operate a HAAS three-axis CNC machine inside of three months.”

At the same time Salmers was spending time with Pohl, OCC was feeling the pinch to have its bike’s wheels designed and machined in house. The “American Chopper” production schedule was tight and the turnaround on a set of rims could typically be up to seven or eight weeks.

‹‹ The rolling frame early on in the process displays the hand-fashioned fuel and oil tanks, the chopper’s rake, and Pohl’s custom swing arm designed using SolidWorks and cut at OCC’s shop. Wheels would come next. .

As a result of the show’s pressures, Pohl’s quick study, Salmers’ help, and the hiring of a machinist named Jim Quinn, more parts on this bike were fabricated at OCC than any of its previous customs; it has the first wheels and swingarm designed and cut in the shop. Now that Pohl has the hang of designing in SolidWorks, he can design a rim in the morning and, with Quinn’s help, cut it in the afternoon.

“We can do it all in house and can easily change the design,” says Pohl. Previously, it was typical for the builders never to see the wheels until it was time to bolt them to the bike.

Insiders’ Details

When OCC starts a project, it begins with a solid backbone, in this case a softail frame from Racing Innovations in Oklahoma City, OK. To give it the proper chopper attitude, OCC increased the angle of the front fork to 45 degrees by cutting the downtube, adding six inches of steel in the gap and mounting a fork 10 inches longer than normal.

A softail is an American motorcycle that uses shock absorbers mounted almost horizontally under the bike to give the visual impression of hardtail bikes of yore. It provides suspension without the shocks mounted outboard, vertically. But OCC turned this one into a true hardtail, so Jason designed a custom rear swingarm that was mounted solidly to the frame. The other SolidWorks parts on this bike designed by Pohl include the brake disks, rear chain sprocket, and the headlight mount.

   

Photo by Tool.

   

Click images to enlarge.

The designer got an accurate display of the final product from the screen shot on the right, which shows the rigid rear swingarm, the wheel, and sprocket. The final physical product can be seen in the photograph at left.

 

The rear fender, gas tank, tank mounting brackets, handlebar, grips, and other sheet metal parts were also manufactured by OCC’s Mike Campo and Nick Hansford. Of course, to get a custom motorcycle rolling under its own power, a fair amount of machining has to be done, and those chores were completed by Jim Quinn.

A Showcase for Software

Before Pohl’s custom parts were bolted together, he was able to confirm that their design was safe by using the integrated COSMOSWorks FEA package. In Chris Salmers’ view, that’s “the best part of the process.”

In setting up the FEA simulation, Pohl set up boundary conditions to simulate actual real-world loading of the parts or assemblies being tested. Centrifugal force, tension, compression, buckling, stress distribution, and fatigue can all be tested.
Once the designs passed muster with COSMOS, the model was exported into Mastercam and sent to the milling robot. Parts were then sandblasted and after paint, polishing, and slipping the 131 c.i. H&L motor into place, the crew at OCC fired up the bike for its first test ride.

The motorcycle made its public debut at last year’s SolidWorks World 2005 in Orlando. With Paul Sr., Jr., and Mikey Teutel waiting with Pohl and OCC GM Steve Moreau, John McEleney rode the bike onto the stage to the delight of an appreciative crowd.  Since then, it has appeared at more than six shows with both SolidWorks and OCC in attendance.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” asks McEleney. It’s more a statement than a question and is affirmed by Salmers. “In all of the parts that were designed in SolidWorks,” he says, “Jason’s artistic flair always shone through.”

The project “was really justified,” adds McEleney, calling the finished product “the emotional paycheck” for SolidWorks employees. “When we see someone using our product, doing neat things,” he explains, “it really gets us jazzed.”

Jonathan Gourlay is DE’s features editor. Once upon a time he spent a few years reporting on the American motorcycle industry and still has enough assorted parts in his basement to prove it. Send comments about this article by clicking here.

 For a gallery of additional photographs of the SolidWorks chopper, scroll down.

 

---

 

Specs

Owner
SolidWorks Corp.

Year/Make
2005 OCC Chopper

Fabrication
OCC

Assembly
Nick Handsford, Christian Welter, Will Eckert

Engine

Size/Type
131 c.i./H&L

Cases
S&S

Carburetor
S&S

Pipes
OCC custom

Transmission
Baker 6 speed

Frame

Type
Racing Innovations

Rake
45 degrees

Fork/Triple Tree
Gold Hammer plus 5 degrees

Stretch
10 in. forward, 6 in. up

Swing Arm
OCC Custom Rigid

Wheels
OCC custom

Seat
Danny Gray

Paint
Nub Graphics

Chrome
Chrome Masters

Polishing
Micro Finish

---

 

Design Toolbox

SolidWorks
SolidWorks Corp.

COSMOSWorks
SRAC Division
SolidWorks Corp.

Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop
Adobe Systems Inc.

Mastercam
CNC Software
 
FlowPATH, FlowCUT
Flow International Corp,

Digitizer
Faro Technologies

Rapid Prototyping
Dimension 3D Printing Group
Stratasys, Inc.

Cintiq Interactive Pen Display
Wacom Technology

---

 

Contact Information

SolidWorks Corp.
Concord, MA

Orange County Choppers
Montgomery, NY

---

The SolidWorks chopper built by Orange County Choppers looked so good we decided to create this gallery of additional photography. Because we didn’t have the room to publish these in the magazine, we thought we’d treat you to some more views here. All photos of the finished motorcycle are by Tool. Click images to enlarge. —JG